Lousiana May Be High -- But It Won`t Be Dry

August 30, 1985|United Press International

VENICE, LA. — People who live on the Louisiana coast are used to the hardships associated with hurricanes, but authorities in at least one parish are making preparations for Hurricane Elena that really hurt.

Local authorities in Plaquemines Parish not only were ordering residents to evacuate Thursday, but they declared that no more liquor could be sold in the parish.

``We were selling booze like crazy,`` said Lilly Creppel, who manages a convenience store. ``A lot of them are staying down here on boats, and they want to get high to ride out the storm.``

She said Plaquemines Parish deputies who delivered the grim news ordered one man to put two cases of beer he was holding back on the shelves.

Creppel, who was running out of cigarettes to sell and worrying about Hurricane Elena, said she was closing the store early anyway.

``If that water comes in, I don`t know how to swim and I don`t want to drown,`` she said.

The long-held empire of segregation boss Leander Perez and his heirs, Plaquemines Parish is a marshy, poverty-stricken peninsula southeast of New Orleans that floods with every heavy rain. It is regularly battered by hurricanes, and residents -- despite their jokes -- are the first to pull out when a storm threatens.